"In all of these experiments, aborted works, happenings, events, the motif of the car crash is crucial. Ballard sought to understand the role that automobile styling, and mass consumerism, plays in our lives. His sights were set on what he saw as the built–in death drive that technology embodies, the effacing of identity, the shutting off of our neurological systems. Our willingness to submit to the amniotic bliss of the technological womb. Of course, today we know where all this would eventually beach: his 1973 masterpiece, Crash. But in 1971 Ballard was still pushing the farthest limits of his obsession, refining riffs and routines, expanding the parameters of the car crash as far as popular culture would allow. Crucially this was far beyond the stuffy confines of 'literature', which Ballard has never had much time for, and into visual art and film: the realm of the popular imaginary."

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"In the 50 years since US insurers organized the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, car crashworthiness has improved. Demonstrating this was a crash test conducted on Sept. 9 between a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. In a real–world collision similar to this test, occupants of the new model would fare much better than in the vintage Chevy.

'It was night and day, the difference in occupant protection,' says Institute president Adrian Lund. 'What this test shows is that automakers don't build cars like they used to. They build them better.'"